Archive for January, 2010
Day By Day by Chris Muir
With Republican Scott Brown’s upset victory over Democrat Martha Coakley for Teddy Kennedy’s Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat, it remains to be seen if President Obama will accede to the will of the people or proceed with business as usual. Without a 60 vote Democrat supermajority in the Senate, Harry Reid WILL have to deal with Mitch McConnell and the Republicans.
Will bipartisanship suddenly break out with some modest and scaled back health care reforms being adopted? Or will the far left of the Democrat Party force the issue and the entire Obamacare legislative package be scuttled?
Then, there are the political ramifications. How many Democrat incumbents in the House from red states or red leaning districts will now retire rather than fight for re-election. Filiong deadlines have not been reached in some 70 per cent of Congressional Districts.
Chris, a game of chicken is correct.
Who will blink first?
Obama or the Republicans?
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My thesis, however, did not at all reflect conventional wisdom. That argument said that Campbell's entry would pull moderate voters from Fiorina– herself supposedly also a moderate, a claim I don't yet happen to find credible– to the benefit of DeVore.
Well, Red County has obtained an internal memo from the Fiorina campaign which we expect will be released later tonight or tomorrow. In it, there are some major surprises.
At first glance, the news, if accurate, is clearly troubling for one candidate– DeVore. The initial numbers, in a jolt to the conventional wisdom:
Fiorina: 26%
Campbell: 26%
DeVore: 11%
With his 64% name ID (vs. 41% for Carly), Campbell looks like an instant competitor, which is not a surprise given how well he was pollling the Governor's race.
When given more information, now quoting from the internal memo, "about Tom Campbell’s dismal record and stands on fiscal issues, the race turns upside down."
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Carly Fiorina will be the GOP nominee
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An e-mail sent out by Chuck DeVore's campaign — and possibly even written by the assemblyman — claimed similarities between himself and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, Scott Brown.
Patrick Ruffini, a Republican operative "doing some work" for Scott Brown's campaign, posted this to Twitter:
Note to candidates: Just because you say you're the next @ScottBrownMA doesn't make you the next @ScottBrownMA
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Patrick Ruffini is correct to slap down Chuck DeVore. But in the interests of full disclosure, Ruffini is doing some work as a web consultant for Tom Campbell who is running against DeVore and Carly Fiorina.
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Working quietly and under the radar, the National Republican Senatorial Committee shifted $500,000 to the Massachusetts GOP in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s dramatic election, according to Republican sources.
The NRSC transfer, made in several dispersals beginning on Jan. 7, were used for phone and mail get-out-the-vote operations targeted at independent voters, said Rob Jesmer, the NRSC’s executive director.
NRSC officials kept quiet about the money transfers, despite public taunts from their Senate Democratic counterparts that the GOP leadership was declining to put money behind Brown’s candidacy.
“Working with the Massachusetts state party, we feel our investment and coordination with them will give us a leg up†come Tuesday, Jesmer told POLTICO.
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The battle over health care legislation has taken its toll on U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson's political well-being, despite the Democrat's efforts to sell Nebraskans on his vote.
Nelson, who once enjoyed some of the highest job performance marks in the U.S. Senate, has now seen his approval rating dip below 50 percent in Nebraska, according to The World-Herald Poll.
Nelson said the poll results come as no surprise, especially since Nebraskans have been “bombarded†with millions of dollars in “misleading advertisements.â€
He said he expects that people will come to appreciate the health care bill.
In the survey, Nelson's job approval rating was 42 percent and his disapproval rating was 48 percent. By comparison, Republican Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska, who voted against the bill, had a 63 percent job-approval rating.
Nelson has been under fire since he supplied the 60th vote to win approval for President Barack Obama's principal domestic policy initiative in the Senate.
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Say good bye
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The Scott heard around the world.
In an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in a U.S. Senate election Tuesday that left President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in doubt and marred the end of his first year in office.
The loss by the once-favored Coakley for the seat that the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy held for nearly half a century signaled big political problems for the president’s party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide.
More immediately, Brown will become the 41st Republican in the 100-member Senate, which could allow the GOP to block the president’s health care legislation and the rest of Obama’s agenda. Democrats needed Coakley to win for a 60th vote to thwart Republican filibusters.
Didn’t I say 2010 was going to be an interesting year in American politics.
Bring on the political machinations to try to pass Obamacare and the Congressional Democrats fleeing the good ship Obama.
Stay tuned…….
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Yes, I am late posting this event that happened last Friday afternoon. I have been slammed with Los Angeles Marathon training and work at the dental clinic.
California United States Senate candidate Carly Fiorina poses for photos with Conejo Valley Republican Federated luncheon attendees prior to her speech
The luncheon crowd was apparently a sell-out. I did not see a vacant seat and folks were lined up along the walls listening to Carly and other Republican candidates for office, including California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner who is running for Governor.
The Ventura County Star report on the event is here.
Two of the top Republican candidates for statewide office were in Thousand Oaks on Friday, both of them locked in tough primaries and spending millions of their own dollars on their campaigns.
Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, a candidate for governor, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, a candidate for U.S. Senate, were the two biggest names at a candidate forum hosted by the Conejo Valley Republican Women.
Fiorina’s speech in Thousand Oaks on Friday looked ahead to the general election. She said the name “Barbara Boxer†about a dozen times, starting with her biggest applause line, “My name is Carly Fiorina and I am running for the United States Senate against Barbara Boxer.â€
She later criticized Boxer for voting against trade agreements, not getting federal water turned back on to farms in the Central Valley, not getting enough of her legislation passed, supporting “cap and trade†proposals to fight global warming, and supporting increases in taxes and spending.
“I think Barbara Boxer is a particularly terrible example of a professional politician,†Fiorina said. “You don’t like her; you know she hasn’t done a good job for you.â€
Although unpopular among Republican audiences like the one Friday, Boxer won her last election, in 2004, by a margin of 20 percentage points.
In a head-to-head match-up against Fiorina, however, the polling firm Rasmussen Reports found Boxer had only a 3-point lead.
Fiorina’s address was a standard stump speech, introducing herself to the Republican audience with a brief biography and the focusing on her main campaign theme of the California economy, business and jobs. Of all of the many candidate speeches, Fiorina enthralled the mostly female audience. I don’t think Carly will have any trouble winning the Republican women vote in June. There was a definite connection between her and the audience.
One of her many major applause lines was when she related her recent treatment for breast cancer and that she was a cancer survivor. In fact, for someone who has just recently completed radiation treatment and chemotherapy, Fiorina was very animated and healthy looking. She finished her speech to a standing ovation from the lucheon attendees.
Carly Fiorina delivering her speech
In additional posts, I will have my brief interview with Carly (conducted prior to her speech), some word on the Democrat Pary sponsored activists who picketed/protested the event and some additional photos.
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Day By Day by Chris Muir
there is NO doubt that today’s Massachusett’s special U.S. Senate election between Scott Brown, the Republican and Democrat Martha Coakley is a referendum on President Obama’s health care reform efforts. The President with his Sunday visit on behalf of Coakley validated the high stakes involved.
The latest polls have Scott Brown ahead.
- Of eight surveys completed and released since Wednesday, seven show Brown leading by at least a point. The one exception shows a dead heat Our chart of all polls shows a nearly seven point Brown gap between the trend lines for Brown and Coakley (51.2% to 44.3%).
- Browns’ support on our standard trend estimate has increased by nearly twelve points (from 38.5% to 51.2%) in just the last two weeks.
But, Republicans should not be complacent and have been working their GOTV efforts (Get Out the Vote).
Nationwide, Twitter followers have set up out of state phone banks to campaign on behalf of Scott Brown. And, there is a level of enthusiasm from the RIGHT that has not been apparent since 2006.
What are the ramifications of a Scott Brown victory today?
- Obamacare is DEAD
- GOP House and Senate recruitment and fundraising efforts to take control of Congress in 2010 will be intensified
Stay tuned…..
Chris, as far as Ted Kennedy goes: there used to be a joke about Jane Fonda and good ol’ Teddy. Remember it?
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